WASHINGTON (CBSDC) – “For almost every American family there are scars from the deep recession,” said Secretary Jack Lew Wednesday in an interview with CBS News Anchor Scott Pelley. Lew, President Obama’s former chief of […]

The Treasury Department investigator whose probe of the Internal Revenue Service’s treatment of tea party groups helped fuel a national uproar failed to tell Congress that his own investigators found no evidence that the targeting of conservatives was politically motivated, a top House Democrat said Friday.

Five years into his presidency, Barack Obama presides over a national security apparatus that in many ways still resembles the one left behind by President George W. Bush. Drones are killing terrorism suspects, the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, holds “enemy combatants” and the government secretly collects telephone records of millions of Americans.

The uproar over the Internal Revenue Service’s heavy-handed treatment of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status can be traced partly to when New York University Law School went into the noodle business.

The Internal Revenue Service, already under fire after officials disclosed that the agency targeted conservative groups, faces increased scrutiny because of an inspector general’s report that it spent about $50 million to hold at least 220 conferences for employees between 2010 and 2012.

The Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative political groups has little if anything to do with most everyday taxpayers, but some lawmakers are hoping attention to the budding scandal will swell public and political support for rewriting and simplifying a federal tax code that has undergone some 5,000 changes in the past dozen years.

The Internal Revenue Service official at the center of the storm over the agency’s targeting of conservative groups has told Congress she did nothing wrong and has invoked her constitutional right to not answer lawmakers’ questions.